Sacred Geometry

by Liliana Usvat

The strands of our DNA, the cornea of our eye, snow flakes, pine cones, flower petals, diamond crystals, the branching of trees, a nautilus shell, the star we spin around, the galaxy we spiral within, the air we breathe, and all life forms as we know them emerge out of timeless geometric codes.

The designs of exalted holy places from the prehistoric monuments at Stonehenge and the Pyramid of Khufu at Giza, to the world's great cathedrals, mosques, and temples are based on these same principles of sacred geometry.

Sacred geometry is the geometry used in the planning and construction of religious structures such as churches, temples, mosques, religious monuments, altars, tabernacles; as well as for sacred spaces such as temenoi, sacred groves, village greens and holy wells, and the creation of religious art. In sacred geometry, symbolic and sacred meanings are ascribed to certain geometric shapes and certain geometric proportions.

Many forms observed in nature can be related to geometry, for example, the chambered nautilus grows at a constant rate and so its shell forms a logarithmic spiral to accommodate that growth without changing shape. Also, honeybees construct hexagonal cells to hold their honey. These and other correspondences are seen by believers in sacred geometry to be further proof of the cosmic significance of geometric forms.

1) The ancient Greeks assigned various attributes to the Platonic solids. For example, the cube symbolized kingship and earthly foundations, while the Golden Section was seen as a dynamic principle embodying philosphy and wisdom. Thus a building dedicated to a god-king might bear traces of cubic geometry, while one dedicated to a heavenly god might have been constructed using Golden Section proportions.

2) When Hindusplan to erect any ediface for religious purposes, from a small wayside shrine to an elaborate temple, they first perform a simple geometric construction on the ground, establishing due East and West and constructing a square therefrom. . Upon this dioagram they lay out the entire building.

3) The Christian religion uses the cross as its major religious emblem, and in geometric terms this was elaborated during the Medieval period to the form of an unfolded cube (reminiscent of example #1 above, where the cube was equated with kingship). Many Gothic cathedrals were built using proportions derived from the geometry inherent in the cube and double-cube; this tradition continues in modern Christian churches to the present time.

4) The ancient Egyptians discovered that regular polygons can be increased while still maintaining the ratio of their sides by the addition of a strictly constructed area (which was later named the "gnomon" by the Greeks); the Egyptians assigned the concept of the ratio-retaining expansion of a rectangular area to the god Osiris, who was, therefore, often shown in ancient Egyptian frescoes seated on a square throne (square= kingship again) in which the original square and its L-shaped gnomon are clearly delineated, but the geometrical construction used to create the gnomon is not shown.

5) One of the best-known pieces of detective work in this regard was the discovery by Jay Hambidge, an art historian at Yale University during the 1920s, that the spirals on the Ionic column capitals of ancient Greek temples were laid out by the so-called "whirling rectangle" method for creation of a logarithmic spiral. He realized this by examining numerous Ionic capitals in art museums until he located some in which the holes made by the placement of compass points had not been obliterated over time. (One of these capitals was an unfinished, broken piece, dug up from a rubbish heap near a temple -- it had apparently been damaged during manufacture and was discarded; its burial preserved it from the elements, and the marks of the geometeric layout were remarkably clear upon it.)

The use of other log spirals in Greek temple architecture (for instance in floor-block proportions and their placement in relation to overall floor area) indicates that Greek architects, unlike the Romans who came after them, deliberately constructed their temples according to "whirling rectangle" geometeric ratios.

Crop circles are one of the most profound and mysterious phenomena of the modern age. They have had a powerful effect on thousands of people who have witnessed and studied them through the years.

"The Sacred Geometry within these formations is recognized by the subconscious, since all living creatures consist of geometrically shaped elements. The Golden Ratio is such an example and frequently appears in crop circles. Sacred Geometry is the most universal language that Earth has ever known up until now." -Saie

Clear examples of Sacred Geometry (and Golden Mean geometry) in Nature and matter:

• All types of crystals, natural and cultured.  
• The hexagonal geometry of snowflakes.
• Creatures exhibiting logarithmic spiral patterns: e.g. snails and various shell fish.
• Birds and flying insects, exhibiting clear Golden Mean proportions in bodies & wings.
• The way in which lightning forms branches.
• The way in which rivers branch.
• The geometric molecular and atomic patterns that all solid metals exhibit.
• The way in which a tree spans out so that all its branches receive sunlight.
• Another, perhaps less obvious but most significant example of this special ratio can be found in Deoxyribonucleic Acid (DNA) - the foundation and guiding mechanism of all living organism

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